Assuming the premise is that the game was banned because it depicts realistic ways to kill people, lets just follow that reasoning to it's logical conclusion.
Whenever someone says this, it's a sure sign that they have nothing of the sort in mind.
All those are toys I was given to play with as a child. I'm happy to report I still haven't killed anyone.
Which of them are you claiming was in any way realistic?
Did your plastic sword dismember people? No, it just bent slightly when it hit them.
Did your supersoaker cause people's heads to explode? No, it just made their hair damp.
You are welcome to believe that Manhunt 2 is harmless to children; AFAIK the scientific jury is still out on what long-term effects violent footage actually have. And you are certainly welcome to point out that the game is not intended for children in any case, and you are quite entitled to believe that adults should be allowed access to any level of violence they choose. But please have the courage to make those arguments directly, with reference to the content the game actually contains, instead of going off on a total tangent about completely irrelevant toys.
Apple (Read Jobs and handlers) left out lynx, Opera, FF, tinybrowser, etc out of the presentation because the end result would have looked much more visually confusing that they wanted, IMO.
Um, no. If they were worried that showing lots of different browsers would be confusing, they could have had a single "Other" sector. That wouldn't have been at all confusing. But they didn't.
And the presentation showed two charts -- of which the first included IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and so forth, in roughly their present-day proportions. If Apple were worried about things being confusing, why did they only simplify the second chart, and not the first?
Sorry, but they showed us two charts, representing "before" and "after", and the "before" chart contained Firefox and Opera, and the "after" chart did not. There's only one way to interpret that.
how exactly is Apple supposed to work with a project that reacts to a presentation in such a manner?
Well, possibly a good start would be not to make a presentation in which your basic message is "I intend to destroy you completely and wipe your project from the face of the planet"?
Oops, I guess it's a bit late for that.
My opinion is that they would like to peel away some Windows/IE users, rather than peel away FF users.
You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but I'm afraid Steve Jobs' presentation made it pretty clear that he disagrees with you.
If you'll forgive my saying so, I suspect Steve Jobs is probably better informed than you about what Apple wants.
Yes, Firefox has a search bar that supports more browsers, but it doesn't have a drop down list with my previous searches.
What? Of course it does. Click in search bar, and press down arrow. Drop-down list full of previous searches appears.
It's not terribly useful, though, because auto-complete is faster -- and Firefox's autocomplete also takes advantage of Google's suggestions feature to show me a list of searches I haven't even made yet. (Maybe Safari's does too... I haven't tried it, because Apple hasn't released a version that will work on any of the operating systems I use.)
Close buttons for each tab in each tab
What's the point? If I want to close a tab, I middle-click on it, which is the default behaviour in Firefox. It's more convenient, because I don't have to hit a tiny close button, I can aim for anywhere on the tab. It's safer, because when I just want to select a tab, I can click anywhere on it with the left button, and not risk accidentally closing it. And it leaves more room on the tab for the name of the site.
Hey, it's not my fault if you bought a computer that only came with a one or two button mouse.:P
Safari is better at resuming stalled downloads.
Quite possibly. I don't use Firefox for big downloads - that's what dedicated download programs like wget are for.
That said, I'd use Safari as well if I could - some sites don't work properly in Firefox, and Konqueror is painful to use. Sadly, Apple haven't released a Linux Safari, so I don't have that option.
Especially the Windows browser market." a statement totally disproved by the fact that IE is still the #1 PC browser and it's a pile of crap with holes so big you could drive not just a Safari, but the whole of the African plains through it.
Um, except the article isn't claiming that Windows users demand perfect security. It's claiming that Windows users demand decent Windows software and realistic advertising.
IE has realistic advertising, and Safari doesn't. When Microsoft released IE 7, and it wasn't perfect, people still forgave them because the claim that IE 7 improved security necessarily involved an admission that IE 6 security had been pretty crap. When Apple released Safari with a big fanfare, claiming that it was "secure from day 1", obviously people were not impressed when security flaws were discovered within hours. If Microsoft made claims like that, Microsoft would also be ridiculed. But Microsoft doesn't.
And IE is (fairly) decent Windows software, and Safari isn't. Let's not forget that IE 7 was heavily criticised for messing with Windows UI conventions, and for enabling ClearType by default - but it still fitted the fundamental Windows paradigm, while Safari tries to impose a totally foreign windowing system on people who cannot imagine only being able to resize a window from the bottom right corner, and a totally foreign font system that looks like nothing else on the Windows platform.
Sorry, but the same standards are being applied all round. If Apple can't take being held to the same standards as Microsoft, it should go back to a platform where it gets to choose what the standards are.
single-player CRPGs, according to Gary Gygax at least, don't even allow for roleplaying... as playing a role requires an audience (any other definition, as he's commented, makes every game a roleplaying game and the definition becomes meaningless)
He's totally wrong, of course. A good single-player role-playing game like Morrowind (not to be confused with roll-playing games, like e.g. Neverwinter Nights becomes in single-player mode) does permit roleplaying of a genuine sort, if admittedly limited in scope. When I play Morrowind, I think about the world from my character's point of view and try to make decisions and mould my behaviour based on what my character would do. This is totally different from e.g. a Half-Life game, where the gameplay is based around shooting stuff, not playing a role. (For example, there aren't many people who try playing as a Gordon Freeman who doesn't use guns, and those who do are likely to do so because it makes killing things more challenging, not because they have decided to experiment with the concept that their Gordon Freeman has a religious objection to killing from afar.)
So, uh, my basic conclusion is that Gary Gygax either doesn't have a clue how computer games work, or is deliberately twisting his definitions to score cheap points, which is called "trolling" round here. Then again, his entire reputation is based on the game mechanics he created, not on the yawnsomely derivative gameworld he placed them in, so I guess it's not surprising that he thinks game mechanics are the key part of roleplaying.
In fact, the Wright brothers are a great example of why patents work. We granted them a limited monopoly so that our society could more quickly understand how their invention worked. As a result, more inventors contributed to advancing flight faster.
Their success certainly inspired more people to invest in aviation, but what evidence do you have that demonstrates that their patents had a positive effect?
The sad truth is that you are relying on a logical fallacy; just because one event (the granting of patents) preceded another (the rapid development of advanced flight technology) doesn't mean that the earlier event caused the later. In short, the Wright brothers aren't the example you think they are. Despite your impressive claims, the reality is that we don't know how quickly the technology would have been understood without their patents, or how many other inventors would have contributed without their patents, or how quickly flight would have advanced without their patents.
We have nothing to measure, and I'm afraid that means we simply cannot draw any meaningful conclusions at all.
(The use of aircraft in the great wars of the 20th century did far more for the development of the technology than the Wright brothers' patents ever did. Perhaps you would like to argue that war is also a good thing?)
Poorly implemented typeface/font substitution strategy which does not appear to know about TTF/ODF hinting
I think you're getting your jargon a little mixed up there.
ODF is nothing to do with fonts - it's the OpenDocument office file format. You probably meant to say OTF, which is a file extension often used for OpenType fonts with CFF outlines.
TrueType/OpenType hinting has nothing to do with font substitution. It's a method used to improve the readability of text at extremely low resolutions by distorting the outlines to fit the pixel grid better.
So it's not at all clear what you're trying to complain about.
In case you were trying to refer to the typeface substitution feature that's used to provide more-or-less good matches for missing fonts -- why do you care how good it is? In a professional prepress environment, you want to use the exact typeface your clients specified, not some random alternative.
And/or learn to use your right control key as well.
What right control key? To the right of my spacebar I have Meta*, Compose, and Alt Graph...
More to the point, I don't quite understand why people say to "swap" caps lock and control. Caps lock is totally useless, so it's far friendlier simply to remap it to be a second control key. That way other people are a bit less disoriented when they have to use your keyboard.
I heartily agree. It's a dreadful program. Nothing horrified me more than a colleague of mine who recently admitted that she actually likes it. (I would only have been marginally more shocked if she'd claimed to like goatse.whateveritisthesedays.)
It also forces you to use Windoze, which itself sucks life.
This, however, is - thank God - not true.
Word 2000 (the most recent version to be even remotely tolerable) runs just as well in Wine, or Crossover if you want professional support. No Windows required.
Maybe they'll blow everyone's mind and release a game that isn't a FPS. Nah, it'll never happen.
It already did happen, on many occasions, though apparently either before your time or so long ago that you've forgotten. ID were great long before Wolfenstein 3D.
Please, God, let the new title be Commander Keen 5...
I love ignorant people who try to correct others' grammar, and only end up displaying how bad their own is.
To demonstrate a conjugation, you should use the active sense of the verb in nonconditional cases, rather than the passive form for each case.
How fortunate that he only used one passive, and no conditionals.
(By the way, who made you king and gave you the power to decree how conjugations shall be demonstrated, yea, even unto the end of time?)
2. God is about to smite Bob. - This is a conditional use, so at least your passive sense is correct;
There is no conditional in "God is about to smite Bob". There is also no passive there.
however, you shouldn't use two prepositions in a row (even if one is part of the verb "to smite"): try "God will smite Bob."
There is nothing wrong with using two prepositions in a row. Furthermore, "God will smite Bob" does not mean the same thing as "God is about to smite Bob" - the latter implies that the smiting will happen in the very near future, while the former merely implies that it will happen at some point in the future.
3. God is smiting Bob. - This is an action: the verb + participle makes it passive.
Um, no, it doesn't. There is no passive involved. You don't actually know what a passive is, do you?
If you're giving a conjugation lesson, conjugate the verb, don't turn it into a modifier: "God smites Bob."
He did conjugate the verb, and he didn't turn it into a modifier. And "God smites Bob" does not mean the same thing as "God is smiting Bob": the latter emphasises the fact that the smiting is an ongoing action at the present moment, while the former merely specifies that it happens without making any real statement as to when (are you saying "God smites Bob every Thursday", or "Here is God. God smites Bob. See God smite"?)
4. God has smote Bob. - This is a passive use
No, it is not a passive.
which means that, again, you're not conjugating "smite."
Where do you get these ideas?
5. Bob has been smitten. - This is acceptable; however, I might avoid the passive use altogether: you don't give an active agent: by whom was Bob smitten?
Congratulations! You have successfully identified a real passive. That's one out of four, which I'm afraid is not a pass mark round here.
(BTW, the question of who smote Bob can generally be inferred from context: something like "God is on a rampage. Bob has been smitten, and so has Fred" is sometimes better style than "God is on a rampage. He has smitten Bob, and Fred too".)
In the future, please remember to ensure correct use when fixating upon the errors of others.
The irony is killing me.
(Cue half a dozen posts telling me that I'm misusing the word "irony". Come on, don't disappoint me here!)
Just as Linux users may use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office, there are numerous games for Linux that are mostly equivalent to their Windows counterparts.
Like OpenOffice.org is a great advertisement for Linux. I tried to do a simple spreadsheet in it over the weekend. What little documentation I could find turned out to be utterly useless - I was completely unable to work out how to write the simplest of macros, since the only documentation of the object model is a back-to-front spaghetti nightmare that assumes you know which package or interface implements the behaviour you're after, and the lack of any form of built-in help or introspection meant I couldn't even find out what methods were supported by any object without ploughing through page after page after densely-written page of irrelevant detail.
This was incredibly frustrating. It was totally obvious that OOo had incredibly powerful macro capabilities, capabilities vastly exceeding anything Excel could manage, capabilities that could do anything I could ever want and more. But it's so badly documented that I, an experienced programmer fluent in everything from C++ to Perl to ML, could not figure out how to write a trivial macro in it. I tried recording some of the steps to see how it worked, but it seems the OOo macro recorder actually generates code in a totally different and barely human-readable language, using a totally different object model. I tried looking for alternative documentation, but all I could find was endless sample macros - useless if what you need is reference material - and adverts for some guy's book, which is apparently really good, but if I'm going to pay for proprietary material I might as well just use the proprietary software I already own instead of having to wait days for a book to be delivered. So I gave up.
Then I tried Gnumeric, which is reputed to be faster and easier to use than OOo anyway - but I had to give up on that when I discovered that it apparently had only about ten keyboard shortcuts and no obvious way to add more (in line with Gnome's standard design principle: "if it's too difficult for Grandma, it should be too difficult for everybody"). Maybe there is a way to add more keyboard shortcuts, but if they're not going to make it easy to find, I'm not going to waste my entire life searching for it, and nor am I going to waste hours giving myself RSI with endless menus.
So, having wasted half the day banging my head against free software brick walls, I just downloaded a trial copy of Crossover Office and installed Microsoft Excel - and got the damn job finished in ten painless and productive minutes.
Is that what Linux games are like, too? Twelve hours of hacking and cursing for five minutes' gameplay? I knew there was a reason I kept a Windows partition around.
Don't get me wrong; I love Linux. But I'm also a pragmatist, and that means I use proprietary software where it makes sense to do so. Linux is great for most things, and I would never go back to Windows as an OS, but nor will I be renouncing Windows software (or even Microsoft software) for a long time yet.
You may argue that my complaint boils down to "boo hoo, it's different from Excel". But that's totally missing the point. I have no trouble at all with software being different; it's software being inferior that I object to. For example, when I switched to Linux I made the effort to learn Emacs instead of insisting on finding something exactly the same as the proprietary text editor I preferred in my Windows days. But Emacs has excellent documentation built in, has well-designed reference manuals for its macro capabilities, and is more customisable than anything I've seen before or since. I could never go back to my old editor. My complaint is that there doesn't seem to be a spreadsheet equivalent; OOo doesn't have the documentation, and Gnumeric doesn't have the customisability. Hmm, I wonder if there's a spreadsheet mode for Emacs...
As for the x64 comments, yes, 32 bit would have been a better way to go, but I've use XP, 2k3, and Vista 64 bit, and all of them also have a 32 bit browser (IE7 or FF) that runs flash content just fine. You can actually open IE 32bit or IE 64bit. What's preventing a linux 64bit OS from doing the same thing?
Absolutely nothing. Which is why I'm currently running 64-bit Linux, with the latest version of Flash working just perfectly. In my 64-bit browser, too, though I could have installed a second, 32-bit browser if I wanted an inferior solution (why does Windows force you to choose between a 32-bit browser or a 64-bit browser? I want one browser that works for everything.)
Now, you may say that the fact that this isn't obvious to you means Linux isn't ready for the desktop. As it happens, I quite agree; I love Linux for myself, but I am actively dissuading less technical people I know from trying it yet, because I know that if they try it now they will swear never to touch it again as long as they live. Maybe 2010 will finally be the year of Linux on the desktop.
He could refer to Disney and use the Disney name without any problem, but the wholesale use of the logo, animation, sound is over the line for fair use.
How do you know that? I was under the impression that in US law there is no statutory line: it's decided by the courts on a case-by-case basis.
(I'm neither a lawyer nor American, so I may well be wrong, but I'd really like to see citations of actual statutes or case-law that state with certainty that this video will be ruled infringing if Disney decide to go to court.)
It can take longer than 2 years for a script to go from paper to cinema. What you are suggesting means that your copyrighted work (the script) could be out of copyright before the edit is even started.
No, all you have to do is start the clock ticking when the work is actually published, not when it's written. In the case of a movie, for example, the work would come out of copyright N years after the premiere, not N years after the writer started work on the script. So you would be able to take as long to prepare the work as it took, and still have exclusive rights for a limited time when you were ready to sell it.
I don't know about American law, but British law already has a provision similar to this; an out-of-copyright work that has never been made public can gain 25 years of protection when it is eventually published (source).
As for Knuth, I had always assumed his work was funded more by academic grants than by sales of his books. Since he makes drafts available for free online as they're completed, I'm guessing he doesn't worry too much about people pirating his work...
The problem is, it's somewhat socialist to prevent someone from profiting on their work indefinitely. This goes against our free market ideologies.
I'd say it's the other way round. What, exactly, is "capitalist" about government-imposed monopolies? How, exactly, does arbitrarily restricting what goods people are allowed to produce and sell fit into the "free market"?
It's not even as though a work entering the public domain, even after a mere seven years, would stop its creators from profiting from it! They could carry on selling it, and people would carry on buying it, because people are as loyal to brands as they are to price. Has Coca-Cola stopped being profitable, even though cheaper brands of carbonated sugar-water are available?
And if they wanted more guaranteed profit, they could, uh, work for it. For example, only Disney would be able to record new commentary tracks from people who worked on the old film (which, being new, would then be covered by that limited copyright once more). Only Disney would be able to pull new footage out of their unpublished archives (assuming limited copyright was timed from first publication, which seems reasonable). Heck, assuming trademark law remained in force, you could even reasonably propose that only Disney would be able to use the original name for the film, and other distributors would have to change the title screen and so forth accordingly - the key thing being, after all, not that people could watch Mickey Mouse for free, but that the work itself could be used in new creative endeavours.
Sadly, it seems Disney et al. are more interested in destructive solutions, lobbying for ever-more-draconian punishments for the very people who love their work the most, than in constructive solutions, exploring creative possibilities for monetising entertainment in a digital age. Let's hope they come to their senses soon.
However, I think an artist should be able to profit on all their work for longer. Artists don't all keep creating great art as they get old. I think a great artist who devoted his life to his work should continue to profit during retirement...
Most people don't get to continue to profit from their work once they retire - why should artists get special treatment? They should save or invest their earnings instead, like everyone else has to.
Of course, you anticipated that response:
most artists I know barely get by while in their prime, so they have no savings by the time they reach retirement.
But this isn't an argument for long copyrights, it's an argument for giving artists more money.
If we as a society value what artists do, we should be willing to pay them well for doing it. Then we should keep copyright short, to give them an incentive to keep on doing it for as long as they can. Finally, since we have paid them well, they have put by ample savings, so they can live well after they retire. Artists get rewarded for their work, the public gets provided with lots of art and entertainment, and the public domain remains free and open for the next generation of artists to plunder for inspiration - isn't this a win/win situation?
Of course, the problem is that most people want new entertainment without having to pay artists what they're worth. In previous generations this was solved through patronage, which led to a small number of the best artists doing very well, but the majority suffered. In the late 20th century it was solved through increasingly draconian copyright laws instead, which had similar effects (the main difference being that instead of causing the rich people who supported art to become slightly poorer, it has caused them to become immensely richer).
We haven't found a 21st-century solution yet. I pray that we find it soon, because if copyright law gets much more repressive it's going to start stifling artistic innovation, and wind up killing the very thing it was invented to protect.
I think its fair to have perpetual Copy write. The work that that artist went through to create the work needs to be recognized.
It's recognised already. The artist gets paid when he sells his work to a publisher, and he gets paid again and again for 70 years' worth of royalties, even if he doesn't do any more work in his life. Why does that need extending?
If I do some work, I get paid for it once and that's that. What's so special about artistic work that means artists should get paid again and again and again for the same bit of work?
Would you deny a painter or his decedents the right to make money just because he didn't make the paint he used.
No, of course not. He has the right to sell the paintings he paints, and his descendants have the right to sell any paintings he didn't sell in his lifetime. Just as an author has a right to sell the stories he writes. Just as a builder has a right to sell the houses he builds. That's all perfectly fair.
However, I don't believe a painter's descendants have a right to demand money every time someone looks at one of his paintings, and I don't believe an author has a right to demand money every time someone reads a story he wrote. They can make money by doing work and then selling it. If they then want to make more money, they can do more work, just like everybody else has to.
I feel people have a right to make a living off their work if they so choose to do so.
And they manage to make a living just fine without perpetual copyrights, so what's the problem?
So do their children and grand children if their work goes beyond their life.
Why? What the hell gives a child the right to earn a living from his parents' work? If you want to have a living, you should have to do your own work and earn your money, not sit back and expect money to roll into your pockets because of someone else's hard work. Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing? What's fair about that?
You do know that Linux includes a fully-functional NTFS driver these days, don't you?
Do you mean ntfs-3g? That's not part of the Linux kernel. It doesn't even run in kernel space. So Microsoft can't have had that in mind when they gave a number for the patents they claim the kernel itself infringes.
Disclaimer: I am not an American, so this doesn't affect me directly, but here's my two Euro-cents anyway...
It affects us more directly than you realise:
The more American support there is for software patents, the more likely it is that they'll be forced into European law.
Free software is a global movement, but a fair bit of its funding and infrastructure is based in America. I would certainly be affected directly if Microsoft got anti-Linux injunctions in America. I suspect you would be too.
So, if there is an idea that would help the African situation, but Marx said it, the idea is invalid, and Africa must suffer?
Not at all. That would be the old "Hitler breathed, so breathing is evil" fallacy.
It is reasonable to say, however, that an idea about Africa that was proposed by a known racist is more likely than other ideas to be founded on racist assumptions. This may make it less likely that it would be helpful. That doesn't mean that it should be dismissed out of hand, of course, but those who advocate it will have to work hard to convince people of that fact. Far simpler just to leave the racist out of it, and either find a more politically correct source for the idea (it's unlikely to be totally unique), or gloss over its source altogether until its merits are clear enough to support it against kneejerk rejection.
Bringing things back out of the analogy, it's sadly the case that some authors - Marx and Rand among them - are extremely controversial, to the extent that it's very difficult indeed to cite them without it being assumed that you're a brainwashed Communist or Objectivist who laps up their every word without a hint of critical thought in your brain. That is clearly a totally unreasonable assumption, but expecting any other reaction from Slashdot does perhaps betray terminal optimism on your part.:)
I'm curious to know what, exactly, this means in your little world.
I'm curious to know what, exactly, you thought was unusual about his usage?
They could be stricter about how they define "infringement" -> they are not being as strict as they could be -> they are being "(of behaviour) not strict", which funnily enough is one of the ways my dictionary defines the word "liberal".
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Did your plastic sword dismember people? No, it just bent slightly when it hit them.
Did your supersoaker cause people's heads to explode? No, it just made their hair damp.
You are welcome to believe that Manhunt 2 is harmless to children; AFAIK the scientific jury is still out on what long-term effects violent footage actually have. And you are certainly welcome to point out that the game is not intended for children in any case, and you are quite entitled to believe that adults should be allowed access to any level of violence they choose. But please have the courage to make those arguments directly, with reference to the content the game actually contains, instead of going off on a total tangent about completely irrelevant toys.
And the presentation showed two charts -- of which the first included IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and so forth, in roughly their present-day proportions. If Apple were worried about things being confusing, why did they only simplify the second chart, and not the first?
Sorry, but they showed us two charts, representing "before" and "after", and the "before" chart contained Firefox and Opera, and the "after" chart did not. There's only one way to interpret that.
Oops, I guess it's a bit late for that.You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but I'm afraid Steve Jobs' presentation made it pretty clear that he disagrees with you.
If you'll forgive my saying so, I suspect Steve Jobs is probably better informed than you about what Apple wants.
It's not terribly useful, though, because auto-complete is faster -- and Firefox's autocomplete also takes advantage of Google's suggestions feature to show me a list of searches I haven't even made yet. (Maybe Safari's does too... I haven't tried it, because Apple hasn't released a version that will work on any of the operating systems I use.)What's the point? If I want to close a tab, I middle-click on it, which is the default behaviour in Firefox. It's more convenient, because I don't have to hit a tiny close button, I can aim for anywhere on the tab. It's safer, because when I just want to select a tab, I can click anywhere on it with the left button, and not risk accidentally closing it. And it leaves more room on the tab for the name of the site.
Hey, it's not my fault if you bought a computer that only came with a one or two button mouse.
That said, I'd use Safari as well if I could - some sites don't work properly in Firefox, and Konqueror is painful to use. Sadly, Apple haven't released a Linux Safari, so I don't have that option.
IE has realistic advertising, and Safari doesn't. When Microsoft released IE 7, and it wasn't perfect, people still forgave them because the claim that IE 7 improved security necessarily involved an admission that IE 6 security had been pretty crap. When Apple released Safari with a big fanfare, claiming that it was "secure from day 1", obviously people were not impressed when security flaws were discovered within hours. If Microsoft made claims like that, Microsoft would also be ridiculed. But Microsoft doesn't.
And IE is (fairly) decent Windows software, and Safari isn't. Let's not forget that IE 7 was heavily criticised for messing with Windows UI conventions, and for enabling ClearType by default - but it still fitted the fundamental Windows paradigm, while Safari tries to impose a totally foreign windowing system on people who cannot imagine only being able to resize a window from the bottom right corner, and a totally foreign font system that looks like nothing else on the Windows platform.
Sorry, but the same standards are being applied all round. If Apple can't take being held to the same standards as Microsoft, it should go back to a platform where it gets to choose what the standards are.
So, uh, my basic conclusion is that Gary Gygax either doesn't have a clue how computer games work, or is deliberately twisting his definitions to score cheap points, which is called "trolling" round here. Then again, his entire reputation is based on the game mechanics he created, not on the yawnsomely derivative gameworld he placed them in, so I guess it's not surprising that he thinks game mechanics are the key part of roleplaying.
The sad truth is that you are relying on a logical fallacy; just because one event (the granting of patents) preceded another (the rapid development of advanced flight technology) doesn't mean that the earlier event caused the later. In short, the Wright brothers aren't the example you think they are. Despite your impressive claims, the reality is that we don't know how quickly the technology would have been understood without their patents, or how many other inventors would have contributed without their patents, or how quickly flight would have advanced without their patents.
We have nothing to measure, and I'm afraid that means we simply cannot draw any meaningful conclusions at all.
(The use of aircraft in the great wars of the 20th century did far more for the development of the technology than the Wright brothers' patents ever did. Perhaps you would like to argue that war is also a good thing?)
- ODF is nothing to do with fonts - it's the OpenDocument office file format. You probably meant to say OTF, which is a file extension often used for OpenType fonts with CFF outlines.
- TrueType/OpenType hinting has nothing to do with font substitution. It's a method used to improve the readability of text at extremely low resolutions by distorting the outlines to fit the pixel grid better.
So it's not at all clear what you're trying to complain about.In case you were trying to refer to the typeface substitution feature that's used to provide more-or-less good matches for missing fonts -- why do you care how good it is? In a professional prepress environment, you want to use the exact typeface your clients specified, not some random alternative.
More to the point, I don't quite understand why people say to "swap" caps lock and control. Caps lock is totally useless, so it's far friendlier simply to remap it to be a second control key. That way other people are a bit less disoriented when they have to use your keyboard.
* No, Gnome, it's not a "Windows key".
(I would only have been marginally more shocked if she'd claimed to like goatse.whateveritisthesedays.)This, however, is - thank God - not true.
Word 2000 (the most recent version to be even remotely tolerable) runs just as well in Wine, or Crossover if you want professional support. No Windows required.
Er, I mean 7, of course. How embarrassing.
Please, God, let the new title be Commander Keen 5...
(By the way, who made you king and gave you the power to decree how conjugations shall be demonstrated, yea, even unto the end of time?)There is no conditional in "God is about to smite Bob". There is also no passive there.There is nothing wrong with using two prepositions in a row. Furthermore, "God will smite Bob" does not mean the same thing as "God is about to smite Bob" - the latter implies that the smiting will happen in the very near future, while the former merely implies that it will happen at some point in the future.Um, no, it doesn't. There is no passive involved. You don't actually know what a passive is, do you?He did conjugate the verb, and he didn't turn it into a modifier. And "God smites Bob" does not mean the same thing as "God is smiting Bob": the latter emphasises the fact that the smiting is an ongoing action at the present moment, while the former merely specifies that it happens without making any real statement as to when (are you saying "God smites Bob every Thursday", or "Here is God. God smites Bob. See God smite"?)No, it is not a passive.Where do you get these ideas?Congratulations! You have successfully identified a real passive. That's one out of four, which I'm afraid is not a pass mark round here.
(BTW, the question of who smote Bob can generally be inferred from context: something like "God is on a rampage. Bob has been smitten, and so has Fred" is sometimes better style than "God is on a rampage. He has smitten Bob, and Fred too".)The irony is killing me.
(Cue half a dozen posts telling me that I'm misusing the word "irony". Come on, don't disappoint me here!)
This was incredibly frustrating. It was totally obvious that OOo had incredibly powerful macro capabilities, capabilities vastly exceeding anything Excel could manage, capabilities that could do anything I could ever want and more. But it's so badly documented that I, an experienced programmer fluent in everything from C++ to Perl to ML, could not figure out how to write a trivial macro in it. I tried recording some of the steps to see how it worked, but it seems the OOo macro recorder actually generates code in a totally different and barely human-readable language, using a totally different object model. I tried looking for alternative documentation, but all I could find was endless sample macros - useless if what you need is reference material - and adverts for some guy's book, which is apparently really good, but if I'm going to pay for proprietary material I might as well just use the proprietary software I already own instead of having to wait days for a book to be delivered. So I gave up.
Then I tried Gnumeric, which is reputed to be faster and easier to use than OOo anyway - but I had to give up on that when I discovered that it apparently had only about ten keyboard shortcuts and no obvious way to add more (in line with Gnome's standard design principle: "if it's too difficult for Grandma, it should be too difficult for everybody"). Maybe there is a way to add more keyboard shortcuts, but if they're not going to make it easy to find, I'm not going to waste my entire life searching for it, and nor am I going to waste hours giving myself RSI with endless menus.
So, having wasted half the day banging my head against free software brick walls, I just downloaded a trial copy of Crossover Office and installed Microsoft Excel - and got the damn job finished in ten painless and productive minutes.
Is that what Linux games are like, too? Twelve hours of hacking and cursing for five minutes' gameplay? I knew there was a reason I kept a Windows partition around.
Don't get me wrong; I love Linux. But I'm also a pragmatist, and that means I use proprietary software where it makes sense to do so. Linux is great for most things, and I would never go back to Windows as an OS, but nor will I be renouncing Windows software (or even Microsoft software) for a long time yet.
You may argue that my complaint boils down to "boo hoo, it's different from Excel". But that's totally missing the point. I have no trouble at all with software being different; it's software being inferior that I object to. For example, when I switched to Linux I made the effort to learn Emacs instead of insisting on finding something exactly the same as the proprietary text editor I preferred in my Windows days. But Emacs has excellent documentation built in, has well-designed reference manuals for its macro capabilities, and is more customisable than anything I've seen before or since. I could never go back to my old editor. My complaint is that there doesn't seem to be a spreadsheet equivalent; OOo doesn't have the documentation, and Gnumeric doesn't have the customisability. Hmm, I wonder if there's a spreadsheet mode for Emacs...
Now, you may say that the fact that this isn't obvious to you means Linux isn't ready for the desktop. As it happens, I quite agree; I love Linux for myself, but I am actively dissuading less technical people I know from trying it yet, because I know that if they try it now they will swear never to touch it again as long as they live. Maybe 2010 will finally be the year of Linux on the desktop.
(I'm neither a lawyer nor American, so I may well be wrong, but I'd really like to see citations of actual statutes or case-law that state with certainty that this video will be ruled infringing if Disney decide to go to court.)
I don't know about American law, but British law already has a provision similar to this; an out-of-copyright work that has never been made public can gain 25 years of protection when it is eventually published (source).
As for Knuth, I had always assumed his work was funded more by academic grants than by sales of his books. Since he makes drafts available for free online as they're completed, I'm guessing he doesn't worry too much about people pirating his work...
It's not even as though a work entering the public domain, even after a mere seven years, would stop its creators from profiting from it! They could carry on selling it, and people would carry on buying it, because people are as loyal to brands as they are to price. Has Coca-Cola stopped being profitable, even though cheaper brands of carbonated sugar-water are available?
And if they wanted more guaranteed profit, they could, uh, work for it. For example, only Disney would be able to record new commentary tracks from people who worked on the old film (which, being new, would then be covered by that limited copyright once more). Only Disney would be able to pull new footage out of their unpublished archives (assuming limited copyright was timed from first publication, which seems reasonable). Heck, assuming trademark law remained in force, you could even reasonably propose that only Disney would be able to use the original name for the film, and other distributors would have to change the title screen and so forth accordingly - the key thing being, after all, not that people could watch Mickey Mouse for free, but that the work itself could be used in new creative endeavours.
Sadly, it seems Disney et al. are more interested in destructive solutions, lobbying for ever-more-draconian punishments for the very people who love their work the most, than in constructive solutions, exploring creative possibilities for monetising entertainment in a digital age. Let's hope they come to their senses soon.
Of course, you anticipated that response:But this isn't an argument for long copyrights, it's an argument for giving artists more money.
If we as a society value what artists do, we should be willing to pay them well for doing it. Then we should keep copyright short, to give them an incentive to keep on doing it for as long as they can. Finally, since we have paid them well, they have put by ample savings, so they can live well after they retire. Artists get rewarded for their work, the public gets provided with lots of art and entertainment, and the public domain remains free and open for the next generation of artists to plunder for inspiration - isn't this a win/win situation?
Of course, the problem is that most people want new entertainment without having to pay artists what they're worth. In previous generations this was solved through patronage, which led to a small number of the best artists doing very well, but the majority suffered. In the late 20th century it was solved through increasingly draconian copyright laws instead, which had similar effects (the main difference being that instead of causing the rich people who supported art to become slightly poorer, it has caused them to become immensely richer).
We haven't found a 21st-century solution yet. I pray that we find it soon, because if copyright law gets much more repressive it's going to start stifling artistic innovation, and wind up killing the very thing it was invented to protect.
If I do some work, I get paid for it once and that's that. What's so special about artistic work that means artists should get paid again and again and again for the same bit of work?No, of course not. He has the right to sell the paintings he paints, and his descendants have the right to sell any paintings he didn't sell in his lifetime. Just as an author has a right to sell the stories he writes. Just as a builder has a right to sell the houses he builds. That's all perfectly fair.
However, I don't believe a painter's descendants have a right to demand money every time someone looks at one of his paintings, and I don't believe an author has a right to demand money every time someone reads a story he wrote. They can make money by doing work and then selling it. If they then want to make more money, they can do more work, just like everybody else has to.And they manage to make a living just fine without perpetual copyrights, so what's the problem?Why? What the hell gives a child the right to earn a living from his parents' work? If you want to have a living, you should have to do your own work and earn your money, not sit back and expect money to roll into your pockets because of someone else's hard work. Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing? What's fair about that?
It is reasonable to say, however, that an idea about Africa that was proposed by a known racist is more likely than other ideas to be founded on racist assumptions. This may make it less likely that it would be helpful. That doesn't mean that it should be dismissed out of hand, of course, but those who advocate it will have to work hard to convince people of that fact. Far simpler just to leave the racist out of it, and either find a more politically correct source for the idea (it's unlikely to be totally unique), or gloss over its source altogether until its merits are clear enough to support it against kneejerk rejection.
Bringing things back out of the analogy, it's sadly the case that some authors - Marx and Rand among them - are extremely controversial, to the extent that it's very difficult indeed to cite them without it being assumed that you're a brainwashed Communist or Objectivist who laps up their every word without a hint of critical thought in your brain. That is clearly a totally unreasonable assumption, but expecting any other reaction from Slashdot does perhaps betray terminal optimism on your part.
They could be stricter about how they define "infringement" -> they are not being as strict as they could be -> they are being "(of behaviour) not strict", which funnily enough is one of the ways my dictionary defines the word "liberal".